Scryer (14 page)

“And where are you going?”

I straightened my posture and looked him
straight in the eye. “Tell Lake Corin that Ivy Scryer is here to see him.”

He gave me a look but did as I asked,
within moments of him making the call, I was escorted to the lift and the key
was turned for the penthouse suite. As the lift shot up, I let out a breath and
leaned against the wall. I felt numb, but like I could lose it at any moment
and collapse. All too soon, the doors opened into the entranceway, and I stood
up straight and tried to remember how to breathe. When I had come here that one
time, I had asked him how he could afford such a place and he answered with a shrug.
“Family money.”

Lake was shirtless, watching me as I limped
out with a rare quizzical look on his face. I started to speak before he could
say anything.

“They’re witches. They worship nature or
some crap like that. Penzance was one of them.” That was all that I had to say.
His questions would need to wait. “I need a shower,” I mumbled, and limped off
to the bathroom to wash away everything that had just happened.

Lake came in later, presumably after he
had made several phone calls to address the situation. He watched as I
showered, not speaking or asking any questions, for which I was glad. I washed
my hair and rewashed it, time and time again until everything ran from me and
down the drain, and the awful scent of burning flesh was replaced with fake
fragrance. A lump was forming on the back of my head, and there was a cut
beneath my hair. I let my hand search over it, wincing at the grotesqueness and
what it represented, shivering at the thought of Penzance causing it, and
worse, at my revenge.

Lake held the towel out to me as I
stepped out of the shower, and I took it, wrapping it around me.

“Got any ice?” I asked him, he just
nodded and led me to the living room.

I sat on the leather armchair with my
ankle propped up while he prepared an ice pack. My ankle was puffed up, and I
hissed with relief as he gently held the ice against it. I didn’t bother with
my head. I thought of it as penance.

“It was Penzance, my roommate. I thought
she was my friend. And Caleb, the guy I was sleeping with.” I shook my head. “I
feel so stupid.”

There was no smirking in his reaction. “I
had them both checked out and nothing unusual came out about either of them. We
also had you watched. Our men never knew that you had even left the apartment…”

“Do you know who they are? Penzance wore
a white robe. Does that mean anything?”

Lake rubbed my foot softly with his
hand, absentmindedly or not, I didn’t know. “I believe so, but…they’re supposed
to be peaceful,
weak.
They were never taken seriously as a threat. How
did you get away?”

“Caleb let me go.” I gave a bitter
laugh. “And before that…”

“Yes?”

“Before that…I killed Penzance.” He
didn’t need to know how. That would be my little secret.

He didn’t raise an eyebrow or show
surprise, he just gave a nod and took my hand. “You’re a fighter, Ivy. There’s
nothing that you can’t do.”

Suddenly, the need to divulge came over
me. “Can I tell you something? When I killed her, I felt…wonderful. I felt
powerful. I felt…”

Horny

The shame of the memory of that feeling
hit me. What the hell was wrong with me? But even describing it, again I felt
that desire.

“Have sex with me,” I said quickly.

He looked at me with his dark eyes, and
I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“Now,” I said.

Again, there was nothing to tell me how
he was feeling or what he was thinking, but then he moved suddenly, gripping my
chin and kissing me hard. I let my arms go around him, pulling him down to me.
My towel dropped, falling to either side of me as he knelt between my legs.

He broke the kiss and asked, “How do I
make love to you without hurting your ankle?”

I shook my head and pulled him in close
again. “It doesn’t matter. Everything hurts. Everything.” And with that I let
my nails curve into his flesh until he hissed with pain and I smiled smugly.
“Come on. I want you
now
.”

That was all that he needed. His fingers
dug into my ass painfully as he lifted me up and entered me roughly. I was wet
and ready for him. I closed my eyes and moved with him as he fucked me. I tried
to just concentrate on him being in me, but flashes of the past kept returning
and searing through my brain. I remembered the rage, the power, the
euphoria
.
I wrapped my legs around him, jarring my ankle, but I didn’t care. I arched my
back as I felt that same intense desire that I had experienced as I brought
about Penzance’s horrific demise.

Me.

I had that power.

I bit Lake’s shoulder as I built up to
cumming. I felt animal-like and dangerous, imagining blood on my lips as I
wreaked vengeance…

I screamed out as I came at the same
time as him, except he called out my name in a deep grunt whereas I was
thinking only of myself. He recovered quickly to give me a brief kiss on the
lips before he brought his hand to my mouth and jammed his fingers into me so I
could not speak as the curse roared up inside me, ready to tell him anything
that would benefit him. There was an urge in me to rip away that hand that
blocked my speech, but then I remembered that he was my enemy and stayed still and
silent until my curse died down.

Slowly, when he realized that the time
had passed, he removed his hand from me.

“I think that I’m becoming one of you.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I think I’ve turned into you. I think
I’ve turned bad and power hungry. I murdered my enemy and I
liked
it. I
was triumphant and all I felt like doing was fucking to satiate myself. Is that
how you and your kind feel when you take what doesn’t truly belong to you? Do
you feel that perverted need to just take from everyone around you?”

He pushed me away from him violently so
I fell back, but I rose up onto my knees without missing a beat. Tilting my
head, I arched an eyebrow and gave a coy smile. “What? Too close to home?”

His fists clenched at his sides, and he
breathed heavily as if fighting something. I waited, wanting to see what it
was.

But there was an interruption. We heard
the chime of the lift arriving on the penthouse entrance before heavy footsteps
sounded. Michael came into view, and Lake turned to face him, still fully
naked.

“You don’t call first?” he sneered at
his uncle before grabbing a throw that had been draped over a chair and
wrapping it around his waist.

“What a lovely scene,” Michael said as
he took in our nude figures. I lazily took the towel and covered myself. “Are
you all right, Ivy?”

I grinned at him bitchily. “I’m always
fine, Michael.
Always.”

His lips flicked up briefly. “Good, Ivy.
I love how nothing can break your spirit.”

I pulled the towel tighter around me
now. “So, I take it that you’ve dealt with the witches.”

“It’s being taken care of.” He walked
over to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a scotch.

“Really? I would have thought that they
would all have been tied to stakes by now and burned alive.”

“You’re a bloodthirsty little thing, you
know that, Ivy?” he commented as he leaned his head back and downed the scotch
all in one go.

“I don’t need you to tell me what I am.”

“Have you tracked down her
lover
?”
Lake asked as he poured himself a drink.

“Caleb let me go. He’s no threat.”

Michael’s smile was indulgent and
condescending. “We’ll make the decisions from now on, Ivy.”

“Really? You didn’t even know who they
were. I don’t have a lot of confidence in you. You seem to think that you’re
better than you really are.”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “We always
thought that they were non-violent, however they have a new leader and it
appears that his influence has become detrimental. He will be taken care of.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but Lake cut
me off. “Go to bed, Ivy. You’ve had an ordeal. You should rest and let us take care
of everything.”

I glared at him, disgusted at being
treated like a child, but for now, I wouldn’t fight. Fatigue overcame me, and
gripping my towel around me, I made my way down the hallway to find a spare
bedroom. I knew where Lake’s bedroom was. I had been in there before, spread
over his luxurious bed while dizzy with lust and love. The spare bedroom was
sparse except for a bed, but that was all that I needed. I found a silk slip in
the closet and dressed in it, not thinking too much about to whom it belonged
to and what dirty things she had done in it with Lake. I climbed in between the
sheets and drew the covers over me. I didn’t feel safe though; I felt fear. Not
fear of the Corins or even the white witches or whatever the hell they were,
but I felt fear for myself and what I was capable of.

I
did not sleep. I heard their voices and the chime of the elevator, which
presumably indicated that Michael had left. Maybe an hour passed after that,
and I heard footsteps outside my room and my door swung open. A weight sunk
down on my bed, and I struggled to sit up, switching on the lamp beside me.
Lake sat there, staring at me and holding a glass of scotch in his hand.

He was drunk; his eyes not as alert as
normal, and his customary grace was lacking.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“You.” His voice was serious. He reached
out to touch my hair, winding a tendril gently around his finger. “I’ve always
loved your hair. It’s so wild…the first time that I saw you, you had it braided
and tame. It seemed so wrong, and I didn’t even know you.”

“When was that?”

He moved his dark eyes to mine. “At my
grandfather’s funeral. You were so young; so beautiful even then.”

“You said that you didn’t know who I was
when we met at the riverbank.” I held my breath for another disappointment,
another lie.

“I didn’t. It wasn’t until later that I
remembered where I’d seen you before, but by then, it was too late.”

“Too late?”

“It was too late to walk away and too
late to come clean with you. You have no idea how infatuated I was with you…”

“That didn’t get in the way of you using
me though,” I said sharply.

“It was the stupidest, most selfish
thing that I have ever done in my life. Well, except for when I just stood by
and let Michael have you at the ritual.” He hung his head down. “Why won’t you
tell me what I need to do for you to forgive me?”

I stared at him, desperately wanting to
cup his face in my hands and make him look at me, to make him kiss me. But I
didn’t. To love him would make me weak. Still…

“Lake—”

But the loud cracking sound of a gunshot
rung through the apartment, and his head snapped up. “What the hell? Stay here,
Ivy.”

He lurched for the door, grabbing the
handle and swinging it open. But as he did so, the butt of a shotgun propelled
forward to ram into his face. He fell backwards and instantly a man began to
hammer at him with heavy black boots.

“Lake!” I jumped from the bed, taking
all my momentum and throwing my weight at Lake’s attacker. His fist struck me
across the face, throwing me to the floor.

“Ivy,” Lake choked out, his face near
mine and streaked with blood. The man delivered another boot into his stomach,
and I screamed and tried to reach him, but my hair was grabbed painfully and I
was pulled to my feet.

“Don’t hurt her,” Lake said through
clenched teeth, doubled over in pain.

“I don’t think that you’re in any
position to give orders, do you?” An older man stepped into the room, and for
some reason he looked slightly familiar. A smile spread over his face. “I have
to say, this was ridiculously easy. I would expect better from a Corin. You didn’t
have half of the man power that I thought you would.”

Lake struggled to his knees, staring up
at the intruder defiantly. “That’s ‘cos I can take care of myself.”

The man looked amused. “Really? But can
you take care of her?”

He nodded in my direction and Lake’s
eyes quickly flicked across to where I was held painfully in the grip of the
large man who had just beaten the crap out of him. I saw pain in his eyes as he
looked at me. I must have looked a sight as I felt the blood leak from my nose.

His gaze hardened, and he looked back to
the leader, managing to get to his feet with difficulty. “If you have me, then
you don’t need her. Let her go. She despises me and will probably be glad to
see me dead, so just
let her go
.”

The man let out a peal of laughter, and
suddenly I knew who he was. It was Caleb’s father; the leader of their coven.
“I don’t think so. I have no love for scryers.” And with that he turned to me
and punched me with a closed fist. My head snapped to the side, and I would
have fallen if not for the horrible grip on my hair that felt like my scalp was
being pulled from my head.

I let out a wail of pain, just as Lake
lunged for Caleb’s father. But it was futile; another one of the witches
appeared and raised a hand. Lake clutched at his head, his face twisting in
pain.

“Careful. It is so easy for us to turn
that pain that you feel into something that can do so much more damage to your
brain, so I suggest that you behave.”

“Stop it! Stop hurting him,” I cried
out, tears forming in my eyes as if I could feel his pain. Lake collapsed to
his knees, his fingernails digging into the skin of his temple. And then all of
him collapsed and fell with a thud to the floor.

I looked down at Lake’s lifeless body
and wanted to cry. One of the men bent down and pulled a black hood over Lake’s
beautiful face.

“Don’t. He won’t be able to breathe.
Please don’t,” I begged.

The cool eyes of the leader looked over
to me. They were much like Caleb’s, except with none of the humor or warmth. “You
just worry about yourself, scryer.”

 I let out a scream as my fear turned to
anger and then to a pure, white-hot rage. I started to channel that rage like
it was a fuse, with the flame starting in my core and rising up through my body
to my brain.

“Silence. He’s not dead,
yet
.” The
leader’s awful smile turned to me. “We still have a little sacrifice to take
part in to remedy all the bad that you two and your kind have inflicted on the
earth. It’s just the beginning, of course, but there will be more of you to
come.”

My scream stopped, and I stared at him
as that small flame in me started to burn into something else, I could almost
smell the smoke.

The leader’s smile faded. “
No.”
He
stepped forward and slapped my already bruised face, the impact snapping my
face to one side, and I felt that flame fade away by the shock and the pain. I
fought to get it back as Caleb’s father reached for my hands and leaned in
close.

“I’ve gone up against far worse than you
in my time,” he said in a low voice. “Your little party trick doesn’t impress
me.” I held his eyes and saw the hatred there. Right at that moment, I wished
that I really were as evil as he made out; that I could kill and destroy my
enemies without remorse. He held out his spare hand and in it one of the other
men placed several cuts of what looked like twigs with vicious thorns erupting
along its length. I struggled again but was held firm as he smiled and the man
holding me from behind took one arm and twisted it behind my back so I cried
out in even more pain. I tried to focus my brain anyway, willing that flame to
build again; to
burn
them all.

But a strong hand on my jaw wrenched
open my mouth and the twigs were shoved inside and pressed down so the barbs
dug into my tongue, and I let out a gasp of horror. That hand on my jaw forced
my mouth closed, and I moaned as the barbs bit into the roof of my mouth as
well. Blood welled, filling my mouth and trickling down my throat so I choked.

“Careful now, you don’t want to swallow
any of that. It’s best that you stay still.”

The horror and the fear: they were the
perfect building blocks for the fire that I was desperate to conjure. But it
was like there was a wall in my brain; a constant torrent of water that doused
anything that resembled fire in me.

The leader smiled down at me. “
Moiraine
thorns in your blood won’t let you make fire. If you were a proper witch, you
would know that.”

I stayed still; despair washed over me.
I was too scared to move in case I dug the thorny barbs deeper into my flesh. I
wanted to look away from him but couldn’t tear my eyes away from his awful
smile.

“I could have been nicer to you,” he
continued. “But the moment that you made the choice to burn one of us, you rid
us of all mercy. So, you’re going to suffer, you
scryer bitch
.”

The excruciating hold on my hair was
released, but I had just a mere second of freedom before a dark hood was
roughly pulled down over my head. I struggled, scared that I would suffocate,
but my wrists were pulled behind my back and bound tightly. Then I was pushed
forward, a harsh grip on my arm guiding me down numerous steps, tugging me up
violently each time I stumbled.

Where was Lake? What were they doing
with him?

My trapped mouth burned to ask these
questions as I struggled to breathe through my nose in the hood. Finally, I
heard the roar of an engine and smelled fumes. We must have been in the garage.
A hand pushed my head down as I was shoved onto something soft and cold. A car
seat? I smelled leather. Then a door slammed shut and we began to move. No one
spoke, and it felt like hours that we travelled. At first the car seemed to
stop frequently, probably at traffic lights, and then the journey went
smoothly. We must have been out of the city, on long open roads unimpeded by
traffic stops. This realization killed any hope for me of rescue.

My thoughts turned to the Circle. Lake’s
disappearance wouldn’t go unnoticed. Not to mention that they had slaughtered
his men. Those bodies would soon be discovered, and when they were…

I imagined Michael’s fury and his desire
for vengeance. For once, the thought of him warmed my heart. I wanted vengeance
as well. I wanted a bloody, torture filled revenge every time the image of
Lake’s beaten body came to me. My jaw shifted involuntarily as tears of rage
began to well in my eyes, but all it served to do was let the barbs rip at my
flesh and fresh blood filled my mouth. My lips opened, and the blood dribbled
out over my chin, gluing the hood to my face. The metallic scent of my blood
overpowered the leather of the car seats, and I hoped that it would stain and
leave a lasting impression of myself on it.

I sucked in a desperate breath. I would
not cry. I would not be weak. That wasn’t me. If I wanted to survive this then
I had to be strong. Crying for Lake would serve no purpose, and I would not let
my love for him be my weakness.

My love…

That had never changed even after his
betrayal. I just had never let myself admit it. And I was not about to let them
kill him.

The slope of the car shifted. We were
going up some steep incline, and I was tossed from side to side as the car sped
around corners. The mountains? Why were we going there?

Sickness from the idea of the heights
that we were at and my own blood came over me in waves. Oh God, I couldn’t
vomit. I would suffocate swiftly and die, here, alone. And I desperately didn’t
want to be alone anymore.

But the car jerked to a stop and the
door swung open, letting in cool fresh mountain air that I could sense even
with the hood covering me. Hands reached in and grabbed me, pulling me roughly
out. I was half dragged over the ground as I struggled to find my footing, and
then I was propelled up steps. I fell, and no hand caught me, instead my jaw
landed with a thud on the edge of a step, driving the barbs in deeper and
sending a low, animal like sound from my throat. I sounded like a wounded
animal, but managed to fight the tears that wanted to form.

I was yanked up again and brought onto a
flat floor. We were inside now. I could feel the warmth of being indoors and
protected from the wind. Without warning I was thrown to the floor, to land on
something that felt like a rug, but it wasn’t enough to cushion me from the
impact of the hard floor below, and fresh blood started to run in my mouth,
trickling down my throat and causing me to choke.

“She can’t
breathe
. Let her go!”

The voice was muffled through the hood,
but I recognized it all the same. It was Lake, and he was okay. Everything
lifted in me then, until I heard a thud noise and I did not hear him anymore.
They wouldn’t kill him straight away, I reasoned, trying to stem the panic
rising inside of me. The witches needed him for a ceremony. I found a wall and
leaned against it. My arm muscles ached with the pressure of my wrists being
bound behind my back.

Without warning my hood was snatched
from my head before being thrown to the side and the man stalked over to a
couch and sat down. It was still night and a fire had been started in the stone
fireplace—a very familiar looking fireplace.

I twisted my head to take in my
surroundings. I had been here before. It was the cabin that Penzance had
brought me to. It was where I had seduced Caleb, or he had seduced me. Whatever
happened, letting him into my world had undoubtedly saved my life the first
time. But I didn’t think that anyone would save me now…

Lake lay next to me. His hood had been
removed as well and his face was a mess of swelling and blood. He groggily
opened his eyes and when he saw me, he struggled to sit.

“You’re hurt. You’ve got blood on your
face.”

I tried to respond, but every time I
tried to move my jaw and make a sound, the vicious barbed gag made me wince in
pain, and more blood flowed. I managed to open my lips and show the terrible
gag. More blood escaped out.

I saw pain his eyes. “It’ll be okay,
Ivy. I promise you. I’ll get you out of here, and I’ll make them pay for ever
hurting you. I’ll make everyone who ever hurt you pay.”